Tag Archives: Arjun Atwal

India’s Arjun Atwal, who is perhaps best known for his close friendship with Tiger Woods, captured the Asian Tour’s season-ending Dubai Open following a dramatic finish at The Els Course in Dubai Sports City.

Tiger Woods finally went on a birdie run, dropping five birdies in six holes on his first nine, the back, at Pebble Beach on Saturday morning. After we’d seen Tiger bomb drive and driver in the fairway and hit green after green on his approach shots for two rounds, he actually didn’t have the best ballstriking day, despite posting his best round of the week. As it always is, the difference came with his putting — he needed 27 in the third round at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on his way to firing a five-under 67 and jump to solo third, trailing Charlie Wi by four shots.

For a while, it looked like Woods would be paired with Padraig Harrington, but as it turned out, the three-time major champ struggled in his last five holes, including two bogeys and a double-bogey to drop out of contention (though he and his sandbagger amateur partner J.P McManus are still leading the pro-am portion of the event.

A likeable underdog is searching for his first win on the PGA Tour, trying to keep his nerve and hold off Woods, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, two-time champ a Pebble, among others. Oh, and Phil and Tiger are playing together in the penultimate group at 12:29 ET. It really doesn’t get much better than that — which I wrote in my Saturday column on Golf.com.

Arjun Atwal and Tiger Woods are more than just frequent practice buddies at Isleworth — surprise! — but they frequently exchange text messages, too. Since Arjun kicked off the Wyndham Championship with a 9-under on Thursday, Tiger has been sending him messages of encouragement, like, “Well done, bud.”

Arjun Atwal shot a 67 in the final round of the Wyndham Championship for a total of 20-under-par to become the first Monday qualifier in 24 years to win a PGA Tour event. He’s also the first Indian-born player to ever win on tour. But he’s ineligible to compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs that begin this week with The Barclays because he’s not a tour member. He lost his card last month because he hadn’t played well enough when his medical exemption ran out.

Luckily on Sunday Arjun didn’t have the tremendous pressure of trying to improve his position in the FedEx Cup standings — just to win a tournament and make history.